Category: Žižek

varoufakis Kant Greece debt crisis what is right

Yannis Varoufakis: No Time for Games in Europe
Feb 16, 2015

ATHENS — I am writing this piece on the margins of a crucial negotiation with my country’s creditors — a negotiation the result of which may mark a generation, and even prove a turning point for Europe’s unfolding experiment with monetary union.

Game theorists analyze negotiations as if they were split-a-pie games involving selfish players. Because I spent many years during my previous life as an academic researching game theory, some commentators rushed to presume that as Greece’s new finance minister I was busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options, struggling to improve upon a weak hand.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If anything, my game-theory background convinced me that it would be pure folly to think of the current deliberations between Greece and our partners as a bargaining game to be won or lost via bluffs and tactical subterfuge.

The trouble with game theory, as I used to tell my students, is that it takes for granted the players’ motives. In poker or blackjack this assumption is unproblematic. But in the current deliberations between our European partners and Greece’s new government, the whole point is to forge new motives. To fashion a fresh mind-set that transcends national divides, dissolves the creditor-debtor distinction in favor of a pan-European perspective, and places the common European good above petty politics, dogma that proves toxic if universalized, and an us-versus-them mind-set.

As finance minister of a small, fiscally stressed nation lacking its own central bank and seen by many of our partners as a problem debtor, I am convinced that we have one option only: to shun any temptation to treat this pivotal moment as an experiment in strategizing and, instead, to present honestly the facts concerning Greece’s social economy, table our proposals for regrowing Greece, explain why these are in Europe’s interest, and reveal the red lines beyond which logic and duty prevent us from going.

The great difference between this government and previous Greek governments is twofold: We are determined to clash with mighty vested interests in order to reboot Greece and gain our partners’ trust. We are also determined not to be treated as a debt colony that should suffer what it must. The principle of the greatest austerity for the most depressed economy would be quaint if it did not cause so much unnecessary suffering.

I am often asked: What if the only way you can secure funding is to cross your red lines and accept measures that you consider to be part of the problem, rather than of its solution? Faithful to the principle that I have no right to bluff, my answer is: The lines that we have presented as red will not be crossed. Otherwise, they would not be truly red, but merely a bluff.

But what if this brings your people much pain? I am asked. Surely you must be bluffing.

The problem with this line of argument is that it presumes, along with game theory, that we live in a tyranny of consequences. That there are no circumstances when we must do what is right not as a strategy but simply because it is … right.

Against such cynicism the new Greek government will innovate. We shall desist, whatever the consequences, from deals that are wrong for Greece and wrong for Europe. The “extend and pretend” game that began after Greece’s public debt became unserviceable in 2010 will end. No more loans — not until we have a credible plan for growing the economy in order to repay those loans, help the middle class get back on its feet and address the hideous humanitarian crisis. No more “reform” programs that target poor pensioners and family-owned pharmacies while leaving large-scale corruption untouched.

Our government is not asking our partners for a way out of repaying our debts. We are asking for a few months of financial stability that will allow us to embark upon the task of reforms that the broad Greek population can own and support, so we can bring back growth and end our inability to pay our dues.

One may think that this retreat from game theory is motivated by some radical-left agenda. Not so. The major influence here is Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who taught us that the rational and the free escape the empire of expediency by doing what is right.

How do we know that our modest policy agenda, which constitutes our red line, is right in Kant’s terms? We know by looking into the eyes of the hungry in the streets of our cities or contemplating our stressed middle class, or considering the interests of hard-working people in every European village and city within our monetary union. After all, Europe will only regain its soul when it regains the people’s trust by putting their interests center-stage.
(Yanis Varoufakis is the ex-finance minister of Greece.)

Zizek’s reply to Boucher

Boucher, G. (2005) The Law as a Thing : Žižek and the Graph of Desire.  In G. Boucher, J. Glynos, & M. Sharpe (Eds.), Traversing the Fantasy Critical Responses to Slavoj Žižek. (pp. 23-44). Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Žižek Responds:

[…] my critics often fall into the trap of what Hegel called “reflexive determination”; what they describe as my oscillation is the projection into my work of the inadequacy of their own reading of my texts. They start with reducing my position to a simplified account of it, and when, afterwards, they are compelled to take note of how my texts do not fit this frame, they misperceive this gap as my own inconsistency or oscillation.

In the present volume, it is Boucher’s basic critical argument which, I think, can serve as an example: he first reads my opposition of public Law and its obscene superego supplement as the opposition between the conscious Law and the unconscious Real, i.e., he “essentialises” the obscene superego into a “pre-cultural Real”; then, of course, when he realises that my notion of the obscene superego doesn’t fit this substantialised “pre-cultural Real,” he transposes this inconsistency into my own theoretical edifice and arrives at the “antinomy governing Žižek’s theory”:

. . . on the one hand. the Real is only the “inherent transgression” of the Symbolic, and so we should cleave to the symbolic field by rejecting the allure of superego enjoyment. On the other hand, however, the symbolic field is nothing but a ruse, secretly supported by an obscene enjoyment that in actuality reigns supreme. … Because of the way Žižek has structured this subject, there is no way to get beyond the oscillation between the symbolic field and an obscene enjoyment, except by dispensing completely with the unconscious.

This alternative itself is false: both “hands” are here Boucher’s, i.e., what I advocate is neither the reduction of the obscene underside of the Law to its secondary “safety valve” to be rejected in the pursuit of a more adequate symbolic law,  nor a substantial Real which effectively “runs the show” and devalues the public Law into an impotent theatre of shadows.

The obscene underside, of course, is the supplement of a Law,  its shadowy double, its “inherent transgression”; it is not merely a secondary “safety valve,” but an active support of the public Law not a tolerated pseudo-excess, but a solicited excess. For this very reason, it functions as a Lacanian sinthome: a knot which literally holds together the Law — you dissolve the excess, and you lose the Law itself whose excess it is.

[…] what if the “oscillation” in question is not simply an epistemological default, but is part of the “thing itself,” a feature of the described socio-symbolic process?

An example from Boucher. again: ”The oscillation between the advocacy of presidential Bonapartism and a religious commune determines the compass of Žižek’s politics”.

What, however, if these are the two sides of the same coin — what if it is precisely because (what Boucher calls) the ”presidential Bonapartism” is the “truth” of democracy, that one should at least keep the space open for what Boucher calls my, advocacy of a “religious
commune” (actually, I locate religious communes into a series with revolutionary collectives like councils (“soviets”) and psychoanalYtic associations !).

There is another-politically much more crucial case of “oscillation” that my critics do not mention that fits this model, the one concerning the status of the obscene underside of the symbolic order: is this obscene underside of unwritten rules mainly the “inherent transgression” of the public Law (and, as such, its ultimate support), or does it also have a positive emancipatory function (the motif that I develop in my Lenin booklet: how an authentic contact with the ethnic, cultural — Other can only pass through an exchange of obscenities). Is, however, this really a case of my oscillation? What if this ambiguity is inscribed into the thing itself — what if the status of obscenity is ambiguous in itself?

Fink love desire pt 1

Fink, B. (2015). Lacan on Love An Exploration of Lacan’s Seminar VIII, Transference. Cambridge: Polity.

The father’s intent may be to convey to his son that he must seek out a woman of his own, yet the son may take it as a prohibition of all love for women or even as a prohibition of all love, period.

This possible explanation of the cleavage between love and desire clearly involves no fall on the mother’s part. The great divide arises owing to the father’s perceived castration threat, which may be understood by the child literally or figuratively — that is, as a loss of the real, physical organ or as a loss of the father’s esteem and love. 22
[…]
If we bring together several of Freud’s formulations, then, a man’s love and desire can converge on one and the same woman, perhaps even durably, if and only if

(1) his feeling of having been betrayed by his mother has been worked through;

(2) He is no longer shocked that he might be inhabited by sexual desire for his mother and sister(s) and has seen through the incest taboo insofar as he realizes there is something incestuous involved in his relations with every woman; and

(3) has come to grips with castration, that is, has allowed himself to be separated from his primary source of jouissanc as a child without constantly striving to get it back. How any of these, much less all three, could be accomplished, without a thoroughgoing analysis is hard to imagine! 24

calum neill wo es war

Neill, C. (2011) Lacanian Ethics and the Assumption of Subjectivity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Neill on signifer represents the subjectt for another signifier

The ethical invocation of Wo Es war, soll Ich werden is not something than can be responded to once and for all in an attainment of subjective security.

Rather it is momentary and perpetual. It is momentary insofar as it manifests in conscious life only fleetingly. It is perpetual insofar as it is indicative of the unconscious processes which necessarily continue unobserved. 20

What Descartes does not adequately answer here, but what is nonetheless raised in his text, is the question of what is going on when I am not thinking, i.e. when ‘I’ is not (re)presented in thought.

Verhaeghe pt 3

Verhaeghe, P. (1998). Causation and Destitution of a Pre-ontological Non-entity: On the Lacanian Subject. In D. Nobus (Ed.),  Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. (pp. 164-189). New York: State University of New York Press.

Lacan not only distances himself from this substantiated interpretation of the unconscious, he even subverts it: the unconscious is of the order of the … the ‘non-realised,’ the ‘unborn,’ ‘limbo’ (les limbes). As a process , it is always situated at the border; in itself, it is a void, an abyss … This abyss is pre-ontological: not of the order of to be or not to be, but of the order of the not-realised.

And if this unconscious becomes realised, it always happens in a bungled, failed way.

There is cause only in something that doesn’t work.

Hence, we find ourselves again dealing with two levels . On the one hand, there is the chain of signifiers with the lack between them (Freud : the repressed) . This is the level of the automaton, of the law and predictability, and thus of science. Underlying this chain, we find a more fundamental lack, concerning the real beyond any signifier (Freud : the primal repressed) . This is the level of the tuche, of cause and unpredictability.

The interaction between the two levels consists in the never ending attempt of the chain of signifiers to produce an answer to the real. This attempt fails and results in the exact opposite: the more signifiers produced, the further one moves away from this real. Therefore, in Seminar XX, Lacan defines the real as ‘what does not stop not writing itself.

What is this real all about? Lacan is quite clear on this point. The real beyond the signifier, functioning as cause, is drive-ridden, and that is why Lacan took the drive as his starting-point.

With this aspect of the real, the meeting is always a failed one, because it contains no signifier. In the course of his teaching, Lacan enumerated the various manifestations of the real: the Other of the Other, the sexual relationship, Woman (La femme), all of them summarized in the notation of the barred Other Signifier_Lack_Other

chiesa phallus

Conversely, as beloved, both child and mother give what they do not have:

  • the child is the stand-in for the mother’s missing phallus (without knowing it);
  • the mother, who has not yet been perceived as deprived by the child, is considered as omnipotent and thus capable of satisfying all his demands.

In this way, what both the child and the mother give without having is the phallus: a temporary superimposition of lacks is obtained

chiesa oedipus complex

Chiesa, L. (2007). Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

For the sake of clarity, it may be convenient at this preliminary stage to list briefly the main tenets of Lacan’s reinterpretation of the Oedipus complex: (64)

(1) the Oedipus complex provides the individual subject with the necessary key to enter the symbolic order understood as the Law of culture;

(2) this is possible only if, in parallel, the subject is sexuated: if he or she assumes
his or her symbolic position as man or woman;

(3) the process through which the Oedipus complex is produced can be compared to a metaphor; by substituting itself for the signifier Desire-of-the-Mother, the signifier
Name-of-the-Father (the symbolic father as the bearer of the Law) initiates phallic signification in the child … Lacan rereads what is arguably the most well-known theory of psychoanalysis through linguistics;

(4) the child is introduced to the three logically sequential “stages” of the Oedipus complex through three different “crises.” Each crisis is based on the subject’s assumption of a distinctive lack of a distinctive object. Frustration, defined as an imaginary lack of a real object, first and foremost the mother’s breast, initiates the child to the first stage, that of the “pre-Oedipal” dual relation with the mother, which Lacan rethinks in terms of the triad child – mother – (imaginary) phallus. The child then accedes to the second stage as soon as he realizes that the mother is “deprived,” that she lacks (in the Real) a symbolic object, the (symbolic) phallus; at this stage, which could easily be related to Freud’s phallic phase, the child is involved in an aggressively imaginary rivalry with the (imaginary) father in order to control the mother. This stage corresponds to the doxastic idea of what the Oedipus complex is: “loving” the mother and “hating” the father (for Lacan, both boys
and girls love the mother).

Lastly, the third stage is initiated by the (real) father who shows the child that he is the one who has what the mother lacks: the child realizes that he cannot compete with him. This is the child’s castration proper, to be understood as a symbolic lack of an imaginary object, the imaginary phallus.

The Oedipus complex is completely resolved when the child, irrespective of sex, identifies symbolically with the father, and thus internalizes the Law.

Žižek politics

Žižek: A modest rejoinder

“Although I am far from a well-meaning liberal, I simply cannot recognise myself in the

Josh Cohen’s review of my last two books misrepresents my position so thoroughly that I think a short clarification is required. I prefer to disregard his resumé of my reading of Hegel which begins with a total nonsense: “Where, in the standard reading of Hegel, one element comes into conflict with another external to it, in Žižek’s reading, conflict is internal or ‘immanent’ to the first element.” It is precisely in the standard reading of Hegel that conflict is internal to the first element, while in my reading, the “first element” is a retroactive illusion, it “becomes first” in the course of the dialectical process. There is no place here to dwell on the central topic of my reading of Hegel which is absent from Cohen’s resumé (how to move beyond transcendental approach without falling back into pre-critical realism), or on how Cohen totally misses the point of my deployment of the antagonism internal to the void itself. More interesting for most of the readers is Cohen’s total misrepresentation of my political stance. He attributes to me a grim vision in which today’s late capitalism appears as the worst of all possible worlds, worse than Nazism or Stalinism:

The grim prospect of ’non-eventful survival in a hedonist-utilitarian universe’ licenses Žižek to prefer even the most catastrophic political experiment to our current set-up. As he writes: ‘Better the worst of Stalinism than the best of the liberal-capitalist welfare state.

In view of later developments, Cohen would undoubtedly attribute to me the claim: “Better the worst of Isis than the best of liberal democracy…” Yes, I did write the statement he quotes a couple of times, but I always strongly qualified it, like here: “Better the worst Stalinist terror than the most liberal capitalist democracy. Of course, the moment one compares the positive content of the two, the Welfare State capitalist democracy is incomparably better.” So the least one can say is that, since I admit that a liberal-capitalist state is “incomparably better” to live in than Stalinism, I must mean something quite different from the simple claim that Stalinism is better than a liberal welfare state. (Incidentally, it should be obvious that I allude here to the well-known Winston Churchill’s quip about democracy as the worst of all political systems, with the proviso that compared to it, all others are worse…) Another example: yes, I wrote: “The change will be most radical if we do nothing.” But here is the context:

We are now approaching a certain zero-point – ecologically, economically, socially… -, things will change, the change will be most radical if we do nothing, but there is no eschatological turn ahead pointing towards the act of global Salvation.”

What is clear from this passage is that if we do nothing, we will slowly slide towards the ecological-economic-social catastrophe – it’s a call to us to do something. Do what? Here my stance is simply open: there are situations where it is better to do nothing (since our engagement just strengthens the system) – sometimes I refer to this as the Bartleby-politics; there are situations where we have to engage in a strong global act (like the struggle to defeat Fascism); and there are situations where one should engage in modest local struggles. The last point is especially important since it belies Cohen’s claim that, in Trouble in Paradise, “Žižek insists that liberal capitalism is the worst of all possible worlds because it closes up all the gaps through which its inconsistencies could be made visible.” Really? Here is a passage from Trouble in Paradise:

The alternative of pragmatic dealing with particular problems and waiting for a radical transformation is a false one, it ignores the fact that global capitalism is necessarily inconsistent: market freedom goes hand in hand with the US support of its own farmers, preaching democracy goes hand in hand with supporting Saudi Arabia. This inconsistency, this need to break one’s own rules, opens up a space for political interventions: since inconsistency is necessary, since the global capitalist system has to violate its own rules (free market competition, democracy), to insist on consistency, i.e., on the principles of the system itself, at a strategically selected points at which the system cannot afford to follow its principles, leads to changing the entire system. In other words, the art of politics resides in insisting on a particular demand which, while thoroughly ‘realist’, disturbs the very core of the hegemonic ideology and implies a much more radical change, i.e., which, while definitely feasible and legitimate, is de facto impossible. Obama’s project of universal healthcare was such a case: although it was a modest realist proposal, it obviously disturbed the core of American ideology. In today’s Turkey, a simple demand for actual multicultural tolerance (which goes by itself in most of Western Europe) has an explosive potential. In Greece, the simple call for a more efficient and non-corrupted state apparatus, if meant seriously, implies a total overhaul of the state. This is why there is no analytic value in blaming directly neoliberalism for our particular woes: today’s world order is a concrete totality within which specific situations ask for specific acts. A measure (say, a defense of human rights) which is in general a liberal platitude, can lead to explosive developments in a specific context.”

This is the reason why I now fully support the struggle of the Syriza government in Greece. If one looks closely at their proposals, one cannot help noticing that what they advocate are measures which, 40 years ago, were part of the standard moderate Social-Democratic agenda – it is a sad sign of our times that today you have to belong to a radical Left to advocate these same measures.

There is much more to say, but I hope these brief remarks make it clear why, although I am far from a well-meaning liberal, I simply cannot recognise myself in the lunatic-destructive figure described by Cohen.

Žižek desire Other pt2

Žižek, S. (2005). Connections of the Freudian Field to Philosophy and Popular Culture. Interrogating the Real. In R. Butler & S. Stephens (Eds.), Interrogating the Real (pp. 62-88). New York, NY: Continuum.

First, already in the 1940s, ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’ alludes simply to the paranoiac structure of desire, to the structure of envy, to put it simply.

Here, the desire of the subject is the desire of the Other; it is simply this kind of transitive, imaginary relationship. It’s basically the structure of envy – 1 desire an object only insofar as it is desired by the Other, and so on.This is the first level, let us say the imaginary level.

Then we have the symbolic level where ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’ involves this dialectic of recognition and, at the same time, the fact that what I desire is determined by the symbolic network within which I articulate my subjective position, and so on. So it is simply the determination of my desire: the way my desire is structured through the order of the big Other. This is well known.

But I think Lacan’s crucial final formulation arrives only when the position of the analyst is no longer defined as starting from the place of the big Other (A), that is to say, the analyst as embodiment of symbolic order, but when the analyst is identified with the small other (a), with the fantasmatic object. In other words, when the analyst gives body to the enigma of the impenetrability of the Other’s desire.

Here, ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’ means I can arrive at my desire only through the complication of the Other’s desire precisely insofar as this desire is impenetrable, enigmatic for me. I think this is the first crucial point, usually forgotten, about fantasy: how true fantasy is an attempt to resolve the enigma of the Other’s desire. That’s the desire that is staged in fantasy. It’s not simply that I desire something, that I make a fantasy. No.

Žižek desire Other pt1

Žižek, S. (2005). Connections of the Freudian Field to Philosophy and Popular Culture. Interrogating the Real. In R. Butler & S. Stephens (Eds.), Interrogating the Real (pp. 62-88). New York, NY: Continuum.

So, in this subjective destitution, in accepting my non-existence as subject, I have to renounce the fetish of the hidden treasure responsible for my unique worth. I have to accept my radical externalization in the symbolic medium. As is well known, the ultimate support of what I experience as the uniqueness of my personality is provided by my fundamental fantasy, by this absolutely particular, non-universalizable formation.

Now, what’s the problem with fantasy? I think that the key point, usually overlooked, is the way that Lacan articulated the notion of fantasy which is, ‘OK, fantasy stages a desire, but whose desire?’

My point is: not the subject’s desire, not their own desire. What we encounter in the very core of the fantasy formation is the relationship to the desire of the Other: to the opacity of the Other’s desire. The desire staged in fantasy, in my fantasy, is precisely not my own, not mine, but the desire of the Other.

Fantasy is a way for the subject to answer the question of what object they are for the Other, in the eyes of the Other, for the Other’s desire. That is to say, what does the Other see in them? What role do they play in the Other’s desire?

What is their role in the desire of the Other?’ This is, I think, absolutely crucial, which is why, as you probably know, in Lacan’s graph of desire, fantasy comes as an answer to that question beyond the level of meaning, ‘What do you want?’, precisely as an answer to the enigma of the Other’s desire.

Here, again, I think we must be very precise. Everybody knows this phrase, repeated again and again, Desire is the desire of the Other.’ But I think that to each crucial stage of Lacan’s teaching a different reading of this well-known formula corresponds.